page_title: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
section_title: Gemini and early Apollo
hierarchical_section_title: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station / History / Gemini and early Apollo
caption_attribution_description: English: Lift-off of Gemini-Titan 11 (GT-11) on Complex 19. The Gemini 11 mission included a rendezvous with an Agena target vehicle. Русский: Запуск космического корабля «Джемини-11» с космодрома № 19 на мысе Канаверал. Миссия включала в себя стыковку с кораблём-мишенью «Аджена».
context_page_description: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is an installation of the United States Space Force's 45th Space Wing.
  The facility was scheduled to be renamed Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in March 2020, but the renaming was postponed indefinitely because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
  CCAFS is headquartered at the nearby Patrick Air Force Base, and located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida, CCAFS. The station is the primary launch head of America's Eastern Range with three launch pads currently active. Popularly known as "Cape Kennedy" from 1963 to 1973, and as "Cape Canaveral" from 1949 to 1963 and from 1973 to the present, the facility is south-southeast of NASA's Kennedy Space Center on adjacent Merritt Island, with the two linked by bridges and causeways. The Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Skid Strip provides a 10,000-foot runway close to the launch complexes for military airlift aircraft delivering heavy and outsized payloads to the Cape.
  A number of American space exploration pioneers were launched from CCAFS, including the first U.S.
context_section_description: The two-man Gemini spacecraft was launched into orbit by a derivative of the Air Force Titan II missile. Twelve Gemini flights were launched from LC-19, ten of which were manned. The first manned flight, Gemini 3, took place on March 23, 1965. Later Gemini flights were supported by seven unmanned launches of the Agena Target Vehicle on the Atlas-Agena from LC-14, to develop rendezvous and docking, critical for Apollo. Two of the Atlas-Agena vehicles failed to reach orbit on Gemini 6 and Gemini 9, and a mis-rigging of the nosecone on a third caused it to fail to eject in orbit, preventing docking on Gemini 9A. The final flight, Gemini 12, launched on November 11, 1966.
  The capabilities of the Mercury Control Center were inadequate for the flight control needs of Gemini and Apollo, so NASA built an improved Mission Control Center in 1963, which it decided to locate at the newly built Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, rather than at Canaveral or at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
  The Apollo program's goal of landing a man on the Moon required development of the Saturn family of rockets. The large Saturn V rocket necessary to take men to the Moon required a larger launch facility than Cape Canaveral could provide, so NASA built the Kennedy Space Center located west and north of Canaveral on Merrit Island. But the earlier Saturn I and IB could be launched from the Cape's Launch Complexes 34 and 37. The first four Saturn I development launches were made from LC-34 between October 27, 1961, and March 28, 1963. These were followed by the final test launch and five operational launches from LC-37 between January 29, 1964, and July 30, 1965.
  The Saturn IB uprated the capability of the Saturn I, so that it could be used for Earth orbital tests of the Apollo spacecraft. Two unmanned test launches of the Apollo command and service module (CSM), AS-201 and AS-202, were made from LC-34, and an unmanned flight (AS-203) to test the behavior of upper stage liquid hydrogen fuel in orbit from LC-37, between February 26 and August 25, 1966. The first manned CSM flight, AS-204 or Apollo 1, was planned to launch from LC-34 on February 21, 1967, but the entire crew of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were killed in a cabin fire during a spacecraft test on pad 34 on January 27, 1967. The AS-204 rocket was used to launch the unmanned, Earth orbital first test flight of the Apollo Lunar Module, Apollo 5, from LC-37 on January 22, 1968. After significant safety improvements were made to the Command Module, Apollo 7 was launched from LC-34 to fulfill Apollo 1's mission, using Saturn IB AS-205 on October 11, 1968.
  In 1972, NASA deactivated both LC-34 and LC-37. It briefly considered reactivating both for Apollo Applications Program launches after the end of Apollo, but instead modified the Kennedy Space Center launch complex to handle the Saturn IB for the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz Test Project launches. The LC-34 service structure and umbilical tower were razed, leaving only the concrete launch pedestal as a monument to the Apollo 1 crew. In 2001, LC-37 was recommissioned and converted to service Delta IV launch vehicles.
caption: Gemini-Titan II.
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